In the big city again

Tonight is our second night staying on Haight Street in San Francisco. It seems like San Francisco is becoming my second home to Redding. I was here three weeks ago, then two weeks before that, and I will also be here next weekend. Thankfully the streets are starting to become familiar and I am starting to learn my way around. Unfortunately, there have been three times today that I have spent at least 30 minutes looking for a parking spot.

Anyway, it has been an amazing trip. The prayer meeting last night was incredible. My hands have never felt quite like they did last night. They were on fire for so long that when we were leaving they felt weird. Weird in a good way. Perhaps I could say they felt like they were dripping with anointing. Maybe not.

This morning we had another meeting with the different campus leaders. In the afternoon we broke up into teams at Berkeley for outreach. I led a treasure hunt team. We only had about an hour because it took me so long to find a parking spot, but God still did some radical things.

Here are some of the things God showed us: Telegraph Ave., "First", problems with the feet, blank piece of paper, communist t-shirt...

So we started off on Telegraph Ave. and at the first street corner one of our guys saw "First" spray painted onto a newspaper stand so we stood over by it. Within a minute I spotted an older woman who was walking slowly. I approached her with one of our girls and then we look at her feet and see them wrapped in bandages. It turns out that she has had 7 surgeries on her feet and the last one the doctors really messed up. She was a Christian and let us pray for her and tell her that God loves her and then she continued on with what she was doing.

We walked down the street and I stopped to pray for a few individuals. At one point I noticed that two of our girls had stopped up the road. So we went back and found them standing next to a blank piece of paper. Soon after we got there one of the guys noticed a man wearing the communist shirt he saw and so he went after him into a restaurant and let him know that God loved him and then prayed for him. Also, a man with a cane stopped right next to us so I prayed for him.

Then a guy came up behind us to try to get us to buy his CD. One of our girls did and then he said, "God bless you." So I started to talk to him more and he ends up asking us to pray for him and so I did. That was a lot of fun.

I had noticed a girl with a cast on her leg earlier and when I saw that she was just at the street corner we went to pray for her. She let us pray and just as I started one of the girls she was with turned her back to me to express her disapproval. Oh well. I should have asked her if she felt anything because I did as I said my 15 second prayer, but I let them go back to their conversation since I had interrupted them.

Next we walked down the street and got into several more conversations with a few street vendors and other pedestrians. We were all having a good time and really getting into it when it was time for us to leave.

When we got back to the JHOP I couldn't find a parking spot for a long time. So I kept driving around until I finally got the best spot right out in front of the building.

Tonight we went to an Indian/Pakistani restaurant for dinner in downtown. We had even more problems trying to find parking. There had been a parade and so there were a ton of people and the restaurant was diagonally across from the Hilton and other major locations. Well, we end up getting a parking spot right across from the Hilton only a few spots down from the restaurant! Talk about favor!

On the way back we drove by a pretty big group of homeless african americans. It really tore me up. To think that they might be living in the very spot that I saw them broke my heart. I can't imagine living like that. The type of evangelism that is on my heart for sweeping through major cities would have to incorporate something special for the homeless. I don't know how, but something has to be done.